Category: UW Experts in the News

Chaunte Ott spoke quietly to the five members of the State Claims Board Wednesday as he asked for compensation for the 13 years he spent in prison for a crime a court found he didnâ??t commit. “I had absolutely nothing to do with the murder of this child,” Ott said in seeking $25,000, the maximum allowed under state law for a wrongful conviction. “This is absolutely against my nature. Iâ??ve never been a violent person.” The Milwaukee County district attorneyâ??s office declined to refile charges against Ott, 36, in June after DNA from a serial murder suspect was found on the body of 15-year-old Jessica Payne. The Wisconsin Innocence Project also had presented evidence that the two men who implicated themselves and Ott in the 1994 murder on Milwaukeeâ??s North Side had fabricated their testimony under intense police pressure.

Hunter, biologist and author Shane Mahoney of Newfoundland, Canada, delivered the 2010 Leopold Lecture April 20 at the University of Wisconsin.

Noted: In an influential 1997 paper, Sean B. Carroll of the University of Wisconsin, Neil Shubin of the University of Chicago and Cliff Tabin of Harvard Medical School coined a term for these borrowed modules: â??deep homology.â?

The state of Wisconsin was the first in the nation to enact stray voltage rules and regulations, said Douglas J. Reinemann, a professor of biological systems engineering at UW-Madison and a stray voltage expert.

Bob Cramer, a co-founder of several Madison area banks and lecturer at the UW-Madison School of Business Puelicher Center for Banking Education, said deposit customers wonâ??t see any impact and neither will good loan customers.

Madison schools have enlisted the help of Stephen Quintana, a UW-Madison professor of counseling psychology, to develop a set of “look fors” to screen job candidates for an understanding of the tenet, said June Glennon, the districtâ??s employment manager.

Quoted: David Van Sickle, a fellow the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health and study director at Reciprocal Sciences, a Wisconsin-based company that provides products and services for public health agencies, said that historically, asthma has been thought of as an urban affliction. Global studies have shown increased incidences of asthma associated with industrialization.

Quoted: Services like this provide a lot more content than a customer actually wants, said Barry Orton, professor of telecommunications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The cable industry has based its entire business plan on selling bundles, Orton said. If customers were allowed to pick and choose the stations they wanted to buy, “weâ??d buy and watch a whole lot less, and I

Quoted: â??Use crisis to test peopleâ??s desire to pay money if they can see a clear plan that will reduce their cost of living,â? said Joel Rogers, a speaker at the event and a professor of law, political science and sociology at the University of Wisconsin who runs the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, a policy center. â??Of course, it may destroy you politically,â? he said, drawing guffaws from attendees, and for good reason.

Noted: Studies suggest that memory consolidation may be one function of sleep. Giulio Tononi, a noted sleep researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, published an interesting twist on this theory a few years ago: His study showed that the sleeping brain seems to weed out redundant or unnecessary synapses or connections. So the purpose of sleep may be to help us remember whatâ??s important, by letting us forget whatâ??s not.

Quoted: “If I find out that they didnâ??t find a helmet than my concern for them is even greater because the likelihood of them having severe head and facial injuries higher also,” said University of Wisconsin Hospital trauma surgeon Dr. Lee Faucher.

Quoted: Americaâ??s leading environmental historian, William Cronon of the University of Wisconsin, calls environmentalism a new religion because it offers â??a complex series of moral imperatives for ethical action, and judges human conduct accordingly.â?

Quoted: University of Wisconsin turf grass pathologist Jim Kerns said it can work if the conditions are right.

Walter Dickey, a UW-Madison Law School professor who specializes in criminal law, agreed that the city is probably on stable legal ground.

Quoted: “People think itâ??s especially wrong to talk about religion,” said Ann Althouse, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “Religion is a private matter.”

Quoted: UW-Madison history professor Jeremi Suri said censure is a powerful, symbolic statement by a legislative body.  “What a legislature is doing when they censure one of their own is basically they are saying one of their colleagues has gone so far out of line, the person needs to be condemned above and beyond the normal course of debate.”Suri said censure amounts to other lawmakers formally distancing themselves from Wood.

UW-Madison political science professor Jon Pevehouse told WKOW27 News while lawmaker votes on Woodâ??s fate would be considered by voters come November, issues such as positions on health care could dwarf any stance on Woodâ??s punishment.

Quoted: UW-Madison Political Scientist David Canon says itâ??s typical for legislatures to put off making certain big decisions until the very end. One reason is strategic: to gain bargaining power. 

Isadore Fine shakes his head at the sight of some weeds. â??Oh my God, two dandelions. Iâ??ve got to get my spade,â? Fine exclaims in the garden outside his Shorewood Hills home, where visitors are welcome and the brilliant tulips are peaking this week. The garden attracted about 100 people on Sunday, said Fine, a 91-year-old professor emeritus of business at UW-Madison.

Quoted: Visitors to Warner Park on Monday asked why the geese couldnâ??t simply be relocated. Scott Craven, a University of Wisconsin professor of wildlife ecology said that idea wasnâ??t practical.

Quoted: Thongchai Winichakul is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin. He says while Mr. Thaksin challenged the elites with his popularity, it was the yellow shirts and their supporters who brought the red shirts to the streets.  

Quoted: But Barry Orton, a University of Wisconsin-Madison telecommunications professor, said the deregulation would hurt elderly citizens who want to keep their landlines and some rural customers who have only one option for phone service. They wonâ??t have other options if their rates increase or their quality of service is poor, he said

Quoted: “Thatâ??s not a large number, but itâ??s still a major success story in terms of conservation of wild animals,” said Tobias Kuemmerle of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who led the new study.

Quoted: The Committee for Truth in Politics ads are a classic example of â??muddying the waters,â? says Ken Goldstein, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project. But there are more ads of this type than ever, he says. â??Itâ??s very early, and itâ??s already very noisy and toxic.â?

Barry Orton, a University of Wisconsin-Madison telecommunications professor, said the deregulation would hurt elderly citizens who want to keep their landlines and some rural customers who have only one option for phone service.

Quoted: With about 730 participants, Keeps is relatively small; hormone research has been tough to finance in the post-W.H.I. years, and every scientist and physician Iâ??ve spoken to said there will never again be another hormone trial as costly and ambitious as the W.H.I. A second study, based in Los Angeles, called the Early Versus Late Intervention Trial With Estradiol, is following more than 600 women â?? comparing a group that has been post-menopausal for an average of 15 years and that is on estradiol or on a placebo with a second, younger group that is an average of three years post-menopausal. â??This is the age when we should really study estrogen,â? says Sanjay Asthana, a University of Wisconsin medical professor who is a designer of the cognition component of Keeps. â??People like me are really waiting to see what this data looks like. Either way. We need to know.â?

Quoted: The recession, meanwhile, may have exacerbated trends in inequality. The capital markets, points out Timothy Smeeding of the University of Wisconsin, have recovered more quickly than the housing or labour markets. This is troubling for the poor and the middle class, since homes represent a greater share of their wealth. Unemployment has been concentrated in Americaâ??s lower ranks. As the rich recover, poor and middle-class people may lag behind. Young workers may fare badly, too. Those who graduate in recessions have lower incomes in the long term, according to Lisa Kahn of Yale University.

“Tenacious parents who will not leave the examination room” are cited as a major barrier to routine screening for alcohol and drug use by pediatricians in the new teen alcohol screening policy. And what 13-year-old would want to tell Mom she pounded five Vodka Cruisers at a party? “We want to keep families involved,” Patricia Kokotailo, director of adolescent medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health told me, “but some things are very difficult for teenagers to express if itâ??s not confidential.”

Quoted: Charles Franklin, a professor of political science at UW-Madison, said Thompsonâ??s decision helps the other GOP candidates who have until now been handicapped by the specter of his campaign run.

Charles Franklin, professor of political science at UW-Madison and a co-founder of Pollster.com, said it would be odd to show up at a rally to announce heâ??s â??taken his last bow in Wisconsin politics.

Mentions Emily Earley, 93, who worked 15 years as a program coordinator and editor of technical publications at the University of Wisconsinâ??s Institute for Environmental Studies, and her colleague Stephen Born, a professor of environmental studies at UW.

Scott Lutz, a University of Wisconsin wildlife ecologist researching habitats Wisconsinâ??s turkeys prefer.

Quoted: UW-Madison Assistant Professor Ankur Desai from the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Services and UW Space Place Director James Lattis.

Noted: Officials at the University of Wisconsin AOSS building said that they captured images of the incident on their rooftop Web cam. Those series of black-and-white images are available here.

Gary Milhollin, a UW-Madison law professor emeritus and founder of the Wisconsin Project, a non-profit nuclear tracking project, based since 1989 in Washington.

After flying to Europe, Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk and 19 other civic and business leaders this week are touring bicycle-friendly cities in Germany and the Netherlands solely by foot, bike and mass transit to learn how to improve the regionâ??s transportation systems. Al Fish, associate chancellor for facilities at UW-Madison, is also on the trip.

The Dane County Coalition to Reduce Alcohol Abuse is hosting two more forums this month on ways to change Wisconsinâ??s culture of heavy drinking. The public is welcome this Thursday and next Thursday at 6 p.m. at CUNA Mutual, 5910 Mineral Point Rd., Madison, in the round building. On Thursday, UW-Madison’s Flo Hilliard will address women and alcohol.

Noted: researchers Tim Van Deelen of UW-Madison, who has analyzed field data from 1998 to 2008.

Quoted: Barry Orton, a University of Wisconsin-Madison telecommunications professor.

“Itâ??s fun to look at the ratings, but there is a lot of noise in those numbers,” said UW-Madison School of Business professor Jim Johannes, director of the Puelicher Center for Banking Education.

Steven A. Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.

According to an estimate from the 1990s, tires spew 350,000 to 650,000 metric tons of particles into the air nationwide, says Anders Andren, a professor of environmental chemistry and technology at UW-Madison.

Quoted: “I think the document reinforces what we already know — that Kissinger wanted to downplay Condor,” said Jeremi Suri, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin and author of a 2007 book on Kissinger. “His primary concern was to maintain good and … productive relationships with Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. Condor was seen as an irritant.”

Quoted: As much as $2 trillion in income went unreported nationally in 2008 â?? about 24 percent of total adjusted gross income in the United States, said Edgar Feige, a University of Wisconsin economist and authority on the topic. Thatâ??s the highest level since World War II, he said.